Article on the biases of research on medical marijuana

[kestrell]

The article is in part an opinion piece by Dr. Sajay Gupta, a popular scientist, but it's also a fascinating examination of how scientific research can contain biases which have a really big impact on attitudes not only in the public, but in doctors themselves.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-marijuana/

Comments

[siderea]

I don't know about you, but I still want to slap him.

[kestrell]

Is there a particular reason he brings out your slapping instinct?

I try to show encouragement to any male who manages to say those three little words which women long to hear, "I was wrong," but I still have strong feelings regarding doctors who claim they are "helping" by making decisions for people which they really do not have the right to make.

[siderea]

1) At no point does Dr. Gupta get around to the realization that if, as his meta-analysis has indicated to him, marijuana is a drug with low risks of addiction, dangerous side effects, or overdose, then people have a right to decide to administer it to themselves for any purpose whatsoever, including recreational intoxication. Dr. Gupta has not yet reached the stage of enlightenment of realizing that people have a right to do as they will with their bodies and that absent amazingly compelling reasons the state has no right to forbid us access of the means to do so.

And it seems to me a whopper of a problem that an MD doesn't see citizens (in his eyes: patients) as entitled to the liberty to dispose of their bodies as they see fit. It's bad enough when a doctor "helpfully" makes decisions for his patients that he really don't have a right to make (in my field we have this thing called "the autonomy of the patient" and its one of five fundamental principles we are ethically bound to respect. Nurses, too, I gather). It's something else again when a doctor "helpfully" takes it upon himself to set public policy in liberty-curtailing ways, making "helpful" decisions for vast numbers of people who never consented to be treated by him.

2) I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have "no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse."/ "We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that."

No, Dr. Asshole, nobody ever systematically misled you EXCEPT YOU. You assumed that "surely" there was evidence. You assumed that because an authority made a decision, it must be a sound one because they are an authority. Because, Dr. Asshole, in your exquisite, rarified privilege, in your sense of entitlement to be obeyed because of your professional expertise, you identified with the authorities who have been so very good to you.

TUSKEGEE, MOTHERFUCKER. WALTER FREEMAN. MENGELE. How in hell did you pass your ethics class? (You HAD an ethics class, right?)

ZIMBARDO. MILGRAM. How DARE you assume that authority is justified by virtue of authority. And in a society as ripely unjust as this one?

It's so nice he's realized that he was wrong. It's lovely that he's contrite and apologizing. But if he doesn't understand the flaws in his character that lead to his being complicit, it's a pretty damn hollow apology, because it will happen again. And suggests a somewhat monstrous problem with his ethical reasoning.

[kestrell]

Postscript: I have this crazy dream that someon would invent a device which, before a doctor could deny a patient access to pain meds, he had to hook himself up to a machine which calibrated the amount of pain the patient was in and provided f3eedback which would put the doctor in that amount of pain. I like to think that the doctor would show a bit of empathy after that.

[siderea]

I'm down with that fantasy. In reality: "Nurse, take the empathic pain reading and log it in the chart." Which, considering nurses' sometimes lack of empathy about pain meds, is not wholly a wash, but still.

[bibliofile]

Yes please! We need that.